The month of December tends to carry with it a popular refrain, and it’s not “Jingle Bells,” “Let It Snow,” or “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” The line that I’m referring to is, “I can’t believe how fast the year went.”

For a lot of people the year 2018 seems to be over before it even got started. I have one friend who casually remarked that the year had gone by so fast she couldn’t really remember anything that had happened. After a moment of deliberate silence I was compelled to remind her that she had actually gotten married over the summer. She gave me a look I still haven’t been able to interpret.

It makes sense, really. Workloads are increasing, and opportunities for diversion are everywhere. All it takes is a friendly request to Alexa to drum up something amusing and before you know it, you’ve watched five seasons worth of Homeland in three days and smoked a pound of newly legal marijuana. That type of collapsible time-frame will hyperdrive anyone into the future, and yes, many will wonder where the time actually went.

To be fair, the alternative is not very appealing for most people. I’m reminded of the character Dunbar in Catch-22, who spent all his time doing stuff he hated because it took forever and so his life seemed a lot longer than if he was engaged in activities he enjoyed, during which the time just flew by. It’s an offshoot of the old Oscar Wilde witticism, that if you live a clean and sober lifestyle you don’t live longer, it just feels like it.

That’s why I make it a yearly tradition, every December 31st, to listen to the song, “The End” by The Doors for twenty-four hours straight while I sit on my couch in the dark. I got the idea from TBS’s lazy-ass scheduling ritual of showing A Christmas Story for a full day, starting on Christmas Eve and ending at infinity. It’s an exercise in madness to listen to one song on repeat for a full day, but I definitely feel better when it’s all over. There’s nothing so cathartic as being locked into twenty-four hours-worth of that nightmarish eleven minutes and forty-three seconds in which Jim Morrison snakes through his bleak musical landscape before acting out his nasty Oedipus scene for the big finale. It’s almost as bad as seeing Ralphie in that pink bunny costume twelve times in a row.

That being said, here are some tips to make 2019 exhaustingly long, so as not to feel gypped at the end:

Throw out all technology: This is a big one. Get rid of all TVs, iPads, laptops, and phones. The first twelve hours without it all will feel like the whole month of January. Hide all knives and razors, as the potential for suicide during the first few days will be high.

Stay sober: Save money! Avoid hangovers! Embrace clarity! And, feel every saturated second of every minute of every hour crash down upon you like a remorseless droplet from a Chinese water torture.

Get a job at TSA as the security agent that monitors the exit to baggage claim: Yes, nothing defines twenty-five hours a day and eight days a week like sitting in the same spot in a hallway making sure nobody tries to sneak back into the secure area, which pretty much nobody ever does. Unintelligible bursts from your walkie-talkie will ensure you aren’t able to fall asleep or completely zone out.

Watch every M. Night Shyamalan movie. When finished, repeat: There’s nothing more abyssal, time-wise, then the promise of a decent mystery slowly revealing itself as a convoluted traffic jam of a narrative.

Go on a fishing trip: Groan under the weighty presence of life while staring at the glassy surface of a still lake. Since you aren’t drinking, either, this should feel like quite the marathon of nothingness.

Go on a fishing trip with the most annoying guy in your office: Creative way to make something interminable that much more interminable. Encourage the geek to get specific about all his frustrations.

Make 2019 the year of Bread: I don’t mean bread as in food, I mean Bread as in the 70s soft rock group. Listen to them on vinyl, with special attention to Everything I Own, If and Make It With You, and feel those minutes just slam on the brakes.

Join up with the Amish: Hang out with the real experts of time stretching by doing chores for days, and sometimes weeks on end that could be knocked out in a few hours with even a rudimentary set of tools and machinery. Men, you may measure the cycle of the calendar by the length of beard whiskers, and women, the length of armpit hair. While churning butter try not to think about Facebook posts of who ate what at which restaurant.

Find a cave, wall yourself up: Go the way of the true anchorite and completely cut yourself off from even basic time monitors like the rising and setting of the sun. Meditate deep into the murky recesses of the psyche. Consider that now you’re part of the Earth, an ancient stone spire quietly biding eternity until the sun breaks down. Eat your toe nails and dead skin for meager sustenance.

There we go. Nice way to start off the new year. I’ve got to go dig out my Doors album now. January 1st can’t come soon enough. Until then…. This is THE END!